EAST VILLAGE — A play coming to the East Village is presenting laughter as the best medicine for healing.
On Saturday, Laura Zam will hold the New York premiere of her one-woman comedic play "Married Sex" that tries to put a comedic spin on how her own experience of childhood sexual abuse affected her married sex life.
"Because I am talking about trauma, I wanted to write a comedy to present this information in way it is not ordinarily presented," she said, of "Married Sex," which will show at Jimmy's No. 43 on East Seventh Street until Aug. 22 as part of the New York City International Fringe Festival.
The play traces Zam's own battle against a common matrimonial problem — her lagging libido — an issue she pins on the trauma of her childhood.
"I fall into this category of somebody who doesn't want to have sex with her spouse," said Zam, 49, who based the play's main character on her own experiences.
"The play really examines that — Why don't couples want to have sex with each other? Why is that the cliché?"
"Married Sex" is a mostly-true story that details Zam's journey as she met with sexperts including a hypnotist, a mistress, a therapist and a rabbi, after getting married four years ago. She portrays dozens of different characters over the course of the play.
Zam got married four years ago and went on the journey that inspired the play in 2011
Zam, a native New Yorker who now lives Washington, D.C., has spent the past 15 years using her performances to help wounded soldiers and rape victims recover from trauma.
Tickets for "Married Sex" cost $15 and can be purchased at the New York City International Fringe Festival's website.
